PASADENA, TX-When luxury condo project Endeavour Parkside came to the drawing board last spring, it was envisioned as a 20-story, 129-unit project with a $35-million price tag. Three months later, it's a $70-million design with 34 stories and 146 units due to the success of its neighbor, Endeavour Clear Lake.

"Projects evolve as they go along," says Robin Parsley, president of Endeavour Holdings Inc. in Austin. "We were originally trying to keep this at 20 stories, and the next thing we knew, we were at 29 stories, than 30, than 34."

Parsley tells GlobeSt.com that demand for larger units and more of them helped to spur the increase. "We didn't necessarily increase the number of units that much. We're up to 146 units from 129," he says. "But we increased the size." The unit sizes for the project at 4949 NASA Rd. 1 go from 900 sf to 3,000 sf. Prices range from $300,000 to $3 million.
The developer has a 30-story, 80-unit project under construction in Clear Lake, which broke ground in April. Penthouses, especially, are in demand with both projects, Parsley continues. "People are interested in large penthouses," he says. "We're totally out of penthouses at Endeavour Clear Lake so we're delivering more of them with Parkside."

Endeavour Parkside, which will be on the site of what is now Parkside Marina, will break ground in early 2007. It has a 14-month construction schedule. Parsley says the marina building will be torn down within 30 days.

InSite Architecture Inc. of Cypress, TX designed the Parkside project. N Sky Construction, part of Endeavour Holdings, is the general contractor. Endeavour is handling sales in house.

Once Endeavour Parkside is completed, the company's next goal is development of a six-acre parcel in nearby Seabrook. "I think that's the best site on the lake, and we're looking at more of a mixed-use development on this," Parsley says. Though the actual development is several years off and plans far from finalized, it could include a high-density residential component along with retail, restaurant and office space.

I like the fact that we'll start seeing road and infrastructure improvements for HY by next year. That'll go in well with the UH-D expansion and will be a nice head start for any BRT/LRT extensions up N. Main (which will be messy for a while).

Frankly, 2 1/2 years is about half as long as I thought we'd have to wait before we saw development on the residential/retail begin. I'm fairly impressed--assuming that the timeline is fairly accurate.

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Disciple of the written word. Antagonist of the uninitiated.

hope i make second page!
yay houston! although there are alot of small ugly brick buildings, it's something! Atleast Houston is active...my fave of course is the Buffalo Bayou Plan. I was there last week and wow! is there a difference ! it's still kinda boring but it's a good place to walk around and and jog. So many plans for downtown makes me happy since really there is not much to do in downtown. now if we could just get one or two scrapers for downtown to fill on those gaps would be excellent!

This development in Kemah now has units for sale on HAR. Must mean it's gotten approval. According to the information, it will have multiple pools, a sky bar, ground floor retail that will include a movie cinema, a sports bar overlooking the water, and multiple restaurants. Wish the architecture was better!

The architect was smoking something regarding that Kemah project. So much potential with that development. How can you have so much detail with amenities such as the top floor skybar and resort style pools and have the base basically as a strip mall? That is definitely a FIRST as far as what I have seen. Goodeness, you would think it is a fad how some of us diss some of these projects but there just seems like there is something exclusive about the design of projects in this area. Mixed use is a funny concept in this city even when we do try. Yes most is better than what was there before but.........

Boy I tell ya, with that project being in such a high profile area with Kemah being one of the top tourist destinations in the entire Houston region, one would think the design would be a lot better. But oh well, Houston is a place to make money. Nothing more and nothing less, and developers know this, so they can get away with saving their cheapest worst designed projects for Houston because they know they can get away with it here. I just don't believe such a design would have even been considered near the shores of Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, Miami or Boston.

This development in Kemah now has units for sale on HAR. Must mean it's gotten approval. According to the information, it will have multiple pools, a sky bar, ground floor retail that will include a movie cinema, a sports bar overlooking the water, and multiple restaurants. Wish the architecture was better!

Sky Bar

Pools

Excuse me. But, did you say a movie cinema will be at the ground level? If so, how many screens?

Good lord, Trae is exactly right. This thing looks like some of the condos going up in South Florida. Not bad nor good, just nothing special. And WG's crack about the strippish look of the ground floor is funny. Given the condo's location, I doubt if a true urban design with urbanely registered retail appointments would work unless you changed the dynamics of the rest of the island. Since the majority of existing homes in the neighborhood are single-home units (given what's presented in the photo) with residents who drive, they're going to want to park at this new retail center.

I suppose, though, you could've changed the design somewhat to detach the retail structures from the building more if you were trying to appease the more car-oriented clientelle. Maybe a smaller, one-story building loosely attached to the main structure via some sort of covered walkway?

Anyway, the parking lot, all things considered, is fairly minimalistic. Actually about the prefered size of a parking lot in, say, Midtown or the Med Center. The problem (for a true urbanist) is that the lot sits in front of the retail outlets, ruining the urban feel. Also, given the size of the area in which the project is to be built, it is difficult to take that same lot and place it somewhere else (or reconfigure it) without making it inconvenient or uninticing to potential consumers living outside the building (that is, people who drive). And the people who drive will undoubtedly be a big part of those reatailers' revenue.

Thus, pragmatism first, urban design second--in this context. At the least, hopefully there will be nice landscaping in the parking lot.

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Disciple of the written word. Antagonist of the uninitiated.

No doubt this area is not in walkable environment in the first place, but with building a development on the waterfront and someone would like to incorporate retail, I would think a strip center base would be the last resort. As I mentioned before, I have never seen such a thing in the first place. I guess placing retail along the waterfront would have complicated things. It just seems like they were limited to where and how the towers could stand and there was only one possible way to incorporate retail which would be in a strip center format, but I doubt it.

I personally don't think the retail component is even necessary. Like you said, to take full advantage of the experience, you'd want to put it on the waterfront, like they do in other "trendy resort" locations.

But they'll probably roll their eyes and snicker at us if they make enough $$$ out of this, which they very well could. With all that said, this development DOES gos in the right direction from the empty, unused parcels that jigsaw the area currently. Kemah has all the makings of a very good resort-like community, especially with some of the historical charm and tourist-friendliness that's in place.

Let's hope that we'll see improvements on the development front from here on.

Though, I doubt a lot of the residents will welcome the potential increase in traffic and congestion.

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Disciple of the written word. Antagonist of the uninitiated.